Looking to Replace Norco 4224 with SuperMicro


Carl314

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I had an incident where a power cable shorted out after rubbing against the fan, and it shorted the backplane of my Norco 4224, which in turn fried several drives.

 

So now I would like to replace the case, and maybe upgrade a bit. From what I’ve read, the SuperMicro is a step above, but still affordable. My primary use is as storage for movies, mostly BDs, but I would like to expand to UHD movies in the future. Here’s what I have:

 

Motherboard: SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O (has 8 SAS2, 6 SATA).
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 v.3
RAM: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC
Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum-1050W (would like to keep using this, if possible)
Adapter: 2 x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 (Appears I may not need these with the case I’m looking at?)
HDDs: Variety of sizes from 3-8TB, want ability to have 24, and to expand to larger drives in future.
Fans: 3 x Noctura NF-F12, 2 x Noctura NF-R8 (I’ve heard the SuperMicro is LOUD, so wondering if these fans would work in it?)

 

It looks like the ideal replacement for the Norco 4224 may be the Supermicro 846E16-R1200B with BPN-SAS2-846EL1 backplane. (Found refurb for $400 on Ebay). My questions:

 

1. Is there anything listed above I could not reuse (other than the AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards, which may not be needed?)? Would my existing fans help quiet it down?

 

2. Which cable would I use to connect to the motherboard? I heard it uses one SFF-8643, but if I did that, would I be connecting it to the slower SATA ports instead of the faster SAS2 ports?

 

3. Is this fast enough to stream UHD?  Multiple streams?

 

4. Would this work with 10TB or larger drives? Per this chart on SuperMicro’s site, the SAS2 backplane works with drives up to 8TB, but it shows the SAS3 as working with the 10TB Seagate drives.

 

Thank you for any feedback.

 

Carl.

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I have a 36 bay Supermicro chassis with the same backplane, I recently installed a 10TB drive for parity, no issues. You will still need an HBA, I use a Dell H310 for 30 drives, I use a SFF8087 to SFF8087 cable to connect the HBA to the backplane, that is all that is required. Yes it is fast enough to stream UHD, as for multiple streams that depends on whether you mean 720p or 1080p

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Ashman, thank you for this helpful response. One follow-up question (and forgive my ignorance) on the Dell H310.

 

As indicated, I already have two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards, and also I have a friend with a spare AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card he can give me. Is the Dell H310 still needed, or would one of these Supermicro cards do? Does the HBA do something other than simply providing ports (beyond my technical abilities, but something to do with working with a port expander to see individual drives?)

 

Thank you again - it sounds like I should order this case.

 

Carl

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I also had one of those AOC-SASLP cards and had nothing but problems with it under unRAID, so I swapped it out for the H310. Oddly enough, I am currently using that same AOC-SASLP card in another unRAID server without issues, so it could have been a hardware issue just with the Supermicro server but generally around here people do not recommend using AOC-SASLP cards and if you do go ahead and decide to use it, you may have issues and you may not.

 

You most definitely need an HBA for that system, you need to have some way of presenting the drives to unRAID. There is an expander on the backplane yes, but something needs to connect the drives to the motherboard, hence the need for an HBA. You simply connect one cable from the HBA to a port on the backplane using the SFF8087 cable and that is all you need.

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This is a good point, they can be quite loud and it really comes down to where your server is situated. If it's in a basement or a garage, away from people, it's fine. If it's close to people it can be a problem. In my case my server is in a half rack next to me in my office so I opted to replace the two standard power supplies with one  SuperMicro PWS-920P-SQ 920W which you can find on eBay. They aren't cheap but much quieter then the 'screamers' that come with the server.

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You are definitely going to want to use the ipmi plugin to set your fan speeds to normal levels.  Around 3400-3500 rpm is about right.   Otherwise the whole house will hear your server.  I have my rack in the basement and on full speed you can hear it upstairs.  I run 2 SC846 cases with SAS3-EL1 expander backplanes and titanium power supplies.  I have the fans all dialed down and it's quiet enough. The titanium 1200w power supplies I can barely hear.  Most of the older supermicro power supplies were really noisy.

 

That SAS2 backplane should work with 10TB or 100TB+ hard drives just fine.

Edited by TUMS
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